Jazz Articles about Alex Merritt

About Alex Merritt

Album Review

Everyone, listeners and composers/players bring their life experience to the music at hand. Jazz musicians in particular, especially today when many, if not most, compose as well as perform, pour themselves once into a composition, and then again when performing it. The performer aims to virtually disappear, to separate the distance and space between himself and the listener, and allow the music to flow. Of course, the listener is also asked to fully “be present" and , in a sense, ...

Album Review

Alex Merritt Quartet: Anatta

by Tyran Grillo
January 7, 2016

It should be no wonder that Alex Merritt should be a practitioner of Vipassanā meditation. The English tenor saxophonist translates that very focus on mindful breathing to the horn with seamless concentration and awareness of heart. A child of Cambridge and graduate of the Birmingham Conservatoire, Merritt has found a character-building groove among bassist Sam Lasserson, pianist John Turville, and drummer Jeff Williams. As the Alex Merritt Quartet, they bring five years of connectivity to Anatta.Immediately striking about ...